Precipitation

How to spell precipitation

13 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce precipitation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does precipitation mean?

1. nounWater that falls from the sky as rain, snow, sleet, or hail.
2. nounThe process by which a dissolved solid separates out of a solution as a settled deposit.

Precipitation in a sentence

• The forecast predicts heavy precipitation across the region overnight.

• Adding the reagent caused rapid precipitation of a white solid.

• Annual precipitation in the desert is barely a few centimetres.

• The lab measured the precipitation of calcium carbonate from the sample.

Where does precipitation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin praecipitare, meaning 'to throw down headlong', which was built on praeceps 'headlong' or 'steep', itself a compound of prae 'before, in front' and caput 'head'. The vivid original image is of something falling head-first, and that idea of a sudden downward plunge survives in two modern uses: water falling from the sky and a solid dropping out of a solution. English took the word in through French and directly from Latin in the 1500s and 1600s, first in the sense of rash or headlong haste, then in the scientific senses. The shared Latin caput 'head' also gives us 'capital' and 'captain', and the buried 'cipit' spelling (rather than the 'cap' you might expect) is exactly what trips writers up. Keeping the root in mind, prae-cipit-ation, helps fix the unstressed middle vowels that otherwise blur into a schwa.

How the word is built

• prae- (before, down, headlong)
• cipit (from caput: head)
• -ation (noun of action)